The stream invites us to follow: the impulse is so common that it might
be set down as an instinct; and certainly there is no more fascinating
pastime than to keep company with a river from its source to the sea.
Unfortunately this is not easy in a country where running waters have
been enclosed, which should be as free as the rain and sunshine to all,
and were once free, when England was England still, before landowners
annexed them, even as they annexed or stole the commons and shut up the
footpaths and made it an offence for a man to go aside from the road to
feel God's grass under his feet. Well, they have also got the road now,
and cover and blind and choke us with its dust and insolently hoot-hoot
at us. Out of the way, miserable crawlers, if you don't want to be
smashed!
Sometimes the way is cut off by huge thorny hedges and fences of barbed
wire--man's devilish improvement on the bramble--brought down to the
water's edge. The river-follower must force his way through these
obstacles, in most cases greatly to the detriment of his clothes and
temper; or, should they prove impassable, he must undress and go into
the water. Worst of all is the thought that he is a trespasser. The
pheasants crow loudly lest he should forget it. Occasionally, too, in
these private places he encounters men in velveteens with guns under
their arms, and other men in tweeds and knickerbockers, with or without
guns, and they all stare at him with amazement in their eyes, like
disturbed cattle in a pasture; and sometimes they challenge him. But
I must say that, although I have been sharply spoken to on several
occasions, always, after a few words, I have been permitted to keep on
my way. And on that way I intend to keep until I have no more strength
to climb over fences and force my way through hedges, but like a blind
and worn-out old badger must take to my earth and die.
I found the Exe easy to follow at first. Further on exceedingly
difficult in places; but I was determined to keep near it, to have it
behind me and before me and at my side, following, leading, a beautiful
silvery serpent that was my friend and companion. For I was following
not the Exe only, but a dream as well, and a memory. Before I knew it
the Exe was a beloved stream. Many rivers had I seen in my wanderings,
but never one to compare with this visionary river, which yet existed,
and would be found and followed at last. My forefathers had dwelt for
generations beside it, listening all their lives long to its music, and
when they left it they still loved it in exile, and died at last
with its music in their ears. Nor did the connection end there; their
children and children's children doubtless had some inherited memory of
it; or how came I to have this feeling, which made it sacred, and drew
me to it? We inherit not from our ancestors only, but, through them,
something, too, from the earth and place that knew them.
I sought for and found it where it takes its rise on open Exmoor; a
simple moorland stream, not wild and foaming and leaping over rocks, but
flowing gently between low peaty banks, where the little lambs leap
over it from side to side in play. Following the stream down, I come at
length to Exford. Here the aspect of the country begins to change; it
is not all brown desolate heath; there are green flowery meadows by
the river, and some wood. A little further down and the Exe will be a
woodland stream; but of all the rest of my long walk I shall only say
that to see the real beauty of this stream one must go to Somerset. From
Exford to Dulverton it runs, singing aloud, foam-flecked, between high
hills clothed to their summits in oak woods: after its union with
the Barle it enters Devonshire as a majestic stream, and flows calmly
through a rich green country; its wild romantic charm has been left
behind.
The uninformed traveller, whose principle it is never to look at a
guide-book, is surprised to find that the small village of Exford
contains no fewer than half a dozen inns. He asks how they are kept
going; and the natives, astonished at his ignorance, proceed to
enlighten him. Exford is the headquarters of the stag-hunt: thither
the hunters flock in August, and spend so much money during thir brief
season that the innkeepers grow rich and fat, and for the rest of the
year can afford to doze peacefully behind their bars. Here are the
kennels, and when I visited them they contained forty or fifty couples
of stag-hounds. These are gigantic foxhounds, selected for their great
size from packs all over the country. When out exercising these big
vari-coloured dogs make a fine show. It is curious to find that,
although these individual variations are continually appearing--very
large dogs born of dogs of medium size--others cannot be bred from them;
the variety cannot be fixed.
The village is not picturesque. Its one perennial charm is the swift
river that flows through it, making music on its wide sandy and
pebbly floor. Hither and thither flit the wagtails, finding little
half-uncovered stones in the current to perch upon. Both the pied and
grey species are there; and, seeing them together, one naturally wishes
to resettle for himself the old question as to which is the prettiest
and most graceful. Now this one looks best and now that; but the
delicately coloured grey and yellow bird has the longest tail and can
use it more prettily. Her tail is as much to her, both as ornament and
to express emotions, as a fan to any flirtatious Spanish senora. One
always thinks of these dainty feathered creatures as females. It would
seem quite natural to call the wagtail "lady-bird," if that name had
not been registered by a diminutive podgy tortoise-shaped black and red
beetle.
So shallow is the wide stream in the village that a little girl of about
seven came down from a cottage, and to cool her feet waded out into
the middle, and there she stood for some minutes on a low flat stone,
looking down on her own wavering image broken by a hundred hurrying
wavelets and ripples. This small maidie, holding up her short, shabby
frock with her wee hands, her bright brown hair falling over her face as
she bent her head down and laughed to see her bare little legs and their
flickering reflection beneath, made a pretty picture. Like the wagtails,
she looked in harmony with her surroundings.
So many are the villages, towns, and places of interest seen, so many
the adventures met with in this walk, starting with the baby streamlet
beyond Simonsbath, and following it down to Exeter and Exmouth, that it
would take half a volume to describe them, however briefly. Yet at the
end I found that Exford had left the most vivid and lasting impression,
and was remembered with most pleasure. It was more to me than Winsford,
that fragrant, cool, grey and green village, the home of immemorial
peace, second to no English village in beauty; with its hoary church
tower, its great trees, its old stone, thatched cottages draped in ivy
and vine, its soothing sound of running waters. Exeter itself did not
impress me so strongly, in spite of its cathedral. The village of Exford
printed itself thus sharply on my mind because I had there been filled
with wonder and delight at the sight of a face exceeding in loveliness
all the faces seen in that West Country--a rarest human gem, which had
the power of imparting to its setting something of its own wonderful
lustre. The type was a common Somerset one, but with marked differences
in some respects, else it could not have been so perfect.
The type I speak of is a very distinct one: in a crowd in a London
street you can easily spot a Somerset man who has this mark on his
countenance, but it shows more clearly in the woman. There are more
types than one, but the variety is less than in other places; the women
are more like each other, and differ more from those that are outside
their borders than is the case in other English counties. A woman of
this prevalent type, to be met with anywhere from Bath and Bedminster
to the wilds of Exmoor, is of a good height, and has a pleasant, often a
pretty face; regular features, the nose straight, rather long, with thin
nostrils; eyes grey-blue; hair brown, neither dark nor light, in many
cases with a sandy or sunburnt tint. Black, golden, reds, chestnuts are
rarely seen. There is always colour in the skin, but not deep; as a rule
it is a light tender brown with a rosy or reddish tinge. Altogether
it is a winning face, with smiling eyes; there is more in it of that
something we can call "refinement" than is seen in women of the same
class in other counties. The expression is somewhat infantile; a young
woman, even a middle-aged woman, will frequently remind you of a little
girl of seven or eight summers. The innocent eyes and mobile mouth are
singularly childlike. This peculiarity is the more striking when we
consider the figure. This is not fully developed according to the
accepted standards the hips are too small, the chest too narrow and
flat, the arms too thin. True or false, the idea is formed of a woman
of a childlike, affectionate nature, but lacking in passion, one to be
chosen for a sister rather than a wife. Something in us--instinct or
tradition--will have it that the well-developed woman is richest in
the purely womanly qualities--the wifely and maternal feelings. The
luxuriant types that abound most in Devonshire are not common here.
It will be understood that the women described are those that live
in cottages. Here, as elsewhere, as you go higher in the social
scale--further from the soil as it were--the type becomes less and less
distinct. Those of the "higher class," or "better class," are few, and
always in a sense foreigners.